THE VERNAL GENTIAN
“Divin être d’azur au cœur pur qui scintille,
Vis tranquille et joyeux sur le riant coteau,
Car partout, fleur du ciel, où ta couronne brille
Elle enfante la joie et luit comme un flambeau.”
HENRY CORREVON.
Do you ask what the Alps would be without the Edelweiss? Ask, rather,
what they would be without the little Vernal Gentian! Ask what would
be the slopes and fields of Alpine Switzerland without this flower
of heaven-reflected blue, rather than what the rocks and screes and
uncouth places would be without _Leontopodium alpinum_ of bloated
and untruthful reputation. Ask what Alpland’s springtide welcome and
autumnal salutation would be if shorn of this little plant’s bright
azure spontaneity; ask where would be spring’s eager joyfulness, and
where the ready hopefulness of autumn. Ask yourself this, and then
the Edelweiss at once falls back into a more becoming perspective
with the landscape, into a less faulty pose among the other mountain
flowers.
Perhaps it is not very venturesome to think that if the Edelweiss had
become extinct, and were now to be found only amid the fastnesses of
legend, it would live quite as securely in the hearts of men as it
does at present; for its repute rests mostly upon the fabulous. But
how different is the case of the earliest of the Gentians! Here is a
plant which, despite the romance-breeding nature of its habit, form,
and colour, draws little or nothing from legendary sources. Fable has
small command where merit is so marked; imagination is outstripped by
reality, and there is scarcely room for invention where truth is so
arresting, so pronounced.
_Gentiana verna_ flies no false colours. Its flower _is_ a flower,
and not for the greater part an assemblage of hoary-haired leaves. It
inspires in men no performance of mad gymnastics on the precipice’s
brink and brow; it wears, therefore, no halo of unnecessary human
sacrifice. It is not a tender token of attachment among lovers. It
does not live in myth, nor has it an important place in folk-lore. In
short, it is just its own bright, fascinating self; there is nothing
of blatant notoriety about its renown, no suspicion of a _succès de
scandale_ such as the Edelweiss can so justly claim.
We may laud the Edelweiss as a symbol of advanced endeavour, but the
Gentian is more useful, if not, indeed, worthier, in this respect;
for it marks no great extreme and therefore its condition is symbolic
of less that is incompatible with consistent human effort. Ruskin has
somewhere said that the most glorious repose is that of the chamois
panting on its bed of granite, rather than that of the ox chewing
the cud in its stall; but, however transcendentally true this may
be, the actually glorious position lies midway betwixt the two—the
position of the Gentian in relation with, for instance, the positions
of the Edelweiss and the Primrose. We are likely to derive inspiration
of more abundant practical value from the Gentian than from the
Edelweiss, because there is comparatively little about it that is
extreme. Though advanced in circumstance it is reasonably situated;
it leads, therefore, to no such flagrant inconsistency with facts,
no such beating of the drum of romance as, apparently, we find so
necessary in the case of Leontopodium. The Edelweiss is not all it
seems; the Gentian is. “_Il ne suffit pas d’être, il faut paraître_”;
and this, certainly, the little Vernal Gentian does. In not one single
trait does it belie the high colour of its blossom.
With what curiously different craft do each of these flowers play upon
the emotions! With what contrary art does each make its appeal to
our regard and adulation! To each we may address Swinburne’s stately
lines: to each we may, and do exclaim:
“... with my lips I kneel, and with my heart
I fall about thy feet and worship thee ...”
Yet this act of adoration, when it affects the Edelweiss, seems far
more an act of idolatry than it does when it affects the Gentian.
For on the one hand we have the Edelweiss stirring the imagination
to wild, foolhardy flights amid the awesome summer haunts of the
eagle and the chamois, when, in simple reality, we could if we would
be reposing amongst hundreds of its woolly stars upon some gentle
pasture-slope away from the least hint of danger and of _scandale_;
while on the other hand we have the Vernal Gentian calling us at once
in all frankness to accept it as it is—one of the truest and loveliest
marvels of the Alps,
“... the fair earth’s fond expression
Of tenderness for heaven above ...”!
To each do we accord, as Mr. Augustine Birrell would say, “a mass of
greedy utterances”; to each do we lose our hearts; but only to one do
we lose our heads. And that one is the Edelweiss: the plant of leaves
which ape a flower; the plant whose flower is as inconspicuous as
that of our common Sun Spurge; the plant that would have us forget
its abundance on many a pasture, and think of it only as clinging
perilously to high-flung cliffs where browse the chamois and where
nest the choughs.
* * * * *
The Gentian Family as a whole is possessed of very striking
individuality, and for the most part its members arrest more than
usual attention. Its name is said to be derived from Gentius, King
of Illyria, who is reputed to have first made known its medicinial
properties—tonic, emetic, and narcotic. Although it ranges from
Behring’s Straits to the Equator and on to the Antipodes, its
residence is mainly northern. In New Zealand its chief colour is red;
in Europe blue; and of all its blue European representatives none can
eclipse perennial _verna’s_ radiant star.
The Vernal Gentian is no stranger to England, though, as an indigenous
plant, it is a stranger to most Englishmen. It is still to be found
on wet limestone rocks in Northern England (Teesdale) and also in the
north-west of Ireland. Like _Gentiana nivalis_ of the small band of
Alpine annuals and tiniest of the blue-starred Gentians, it lingers
in the British Isles, a rare, pathetic remnant of past salubrity of
climate and condition; and to its homes in England and Ireland, rather
than in Switzerland, we should perhaps go to study how to grow it in
our gardens more successfully than we do at present. But it is to the
Alps that we must turn to find it revelling wealthily in a setting for
which it is pre-eminently suited; it is there that its
“... living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet.”
For, in the Alps, it is an abundant denizen of the pastures in
general: both the grazing pastures or “Alps,” and “the artificial
modifications of the pastures,” as Mr. Newell Arber calls the meadows.
[Illustration: The PARADISE LILY (_Paradisia Liliastrum_) near the
Glacier de Trient about the middle of June. ]
If we wanted to give this Gentian an English name (and far be it
from me to suggest that we should do any such thing) we should
probably have to call it Spring-Felwort; Felwort being an old-time
title for _Gentiana amarella_, an annual herb common to dry pastures
and chalk downs in England, and possibly at one time employed
by tanners. In the Jura Mountains _verna_ goes by the name of
_Œil-de-chat_, and among the peasants inhabiting the northern side of
the Dent du Midi, in the Canton de Valais, I have heard it referred to
as _Le Bas du Bon Dieu_; but, considering the remarkably suggestive
character of the plant, the domain of folk-lore seems curiously
empty of its presence. This, possibly, is in part due to its amazing
abundance, and to the fact that it is to be found from about 1,200
feet to about 10,000 feet, thus causing it to meet with the proverbial
fate of things familiar. But, at any rate, its dried flowers, mixed
with those of the Rhododendron and the purple Viola, are used in
the form of “tea” by the montagnards as an antidote for chills and
rheumatism.
The appearance of _verna_ upon the pastures is not confined solely
to the early springtime; though this is the season of its greatest
wealth, it may be met with quite commonly in the late autumn. Indeed
it affects the days which circle round the whole of winter; and I
have found it several times even at Christmas near Arveyes, above
Gryon (Vaud), upon steep southward-facing banks where sun and wind
combined to chase away the snow. If, then, for no other reason than
this, it seems curious that romance has not gathered this Gentian
under its wing as it has the Edelweiss.
As for the radiant purity of its five-pointed azure stars, it is
perhaps only outshone by that of the Myosotis-like flowers of
_Eritrichium nanum_, King of the Alps; but even this rivalry is
doubtful when _verna_ is growing upon a limestone soil, where its
blossoms are more brilliant than those produced upon granitic ground.
Blue, however, although it is the superabundant type-colour, is not
the invariable hue of its blossoms; indeed, it shows more variety
than even many a botanist suspects, and I have found it in all tints
from deep French to pale Cambridge blue, from rich red-purple to the
palest lilac, and from the faintest yellow-white, through blush-white,
to the purest blue-white. I have, too, found it party-coloured,
blue-and-white.
These many variations from the type give occasion for suggestive
questions that I fain would indicate, because I believe with Mr. Arber
that such variations can only “arise from deep-seated tendencies,
which find their expression in the existence of the individual,
and the evolution of the race.” For instance, are the mauve and
plum-coloured flowers a break-back to the ancestral type; that is
to say, was the more primitive _verna_ red? Blue flowers are more
highly organised than those of other colours; are, then, all flowers
striving to be blue—like Emerson’s grass, “striving to be man?” The
French-blue Gentians are of warmer tint than those of Cambridge hue;
are they, therefore, the first decided step into this highest of the
primary colours: are they the first strikingly victorious effort of
the plant to shake off all trammel of red? And white; what of white?
I have seen white _verna_ tinged with rose, and white _verna_ of a
white altogether free from any tint of grossness—a white so positive
as to suggest the utmost frailty arising from degeneracy, if it were
not known to be the natural consequence of persistent advance through
blue. These are nice points for speculation.
But “let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause”! Blue for us
is the essential colour for this Gentian: we can dispense with all its
efforts to be white. Blue, not white, is the hue of promise. And it
is promise we look for at the turn of the year; it is promise we must
have after long months of snow. When youthful “chevalier Printemps”
hymns us his ancient message; when in penetrating accents of triumph
he tells us:
“C’est moi que Dieu sur terre envoie
Dans un rayon de son soleil
Pour mettre la terre en joie,
Pour faire un monde tout vermeil.
Quand l’hiver m’a crié ‘qui vive!’
J’ai dit: ‘Fais-moi place, il est temps!
Du Paradis tout droit j’arrive:
Je suis le chevalier Printemps!’”
—when, I say, spring thus speaks to us of the rout of winter and the
dawn of a wealthier life, it is blue that we look for most upon the
frost-stained fields; blue not white—the blue of the type-flowered
Gentian, not the white of the Alpine Crowfoot and Crocus.
Whilst writing these lines on the most fascinating spring flower of
the Alps, there comes before my mind one spot in particular where it
abounds in May—a certain long and rapid grassy slope at Le Planet,
above Argentière (Haute-Savoie). Albeit not in Switzerland, Le Planet
is only just across the frontier; and, as every one who knows the
district will attest, it is difficult to draw a rigid, formal line
where flowers and mountains are so knit in common semblance. Other
rich scenes of azure I can recall—as on the swelling slopes of the
Jura around the Suchet, or on the fields which mount from Naters
towards Bel-Alp; but none forces itself to mind with such persistence
as does this slope at Le Planet. And it is because the surrounding
circumstance illustrates so well all that I have been saying about
this Gentian’s presence in the spring.
The slope in question is not five minutes’ stroll from the hotel.
On the plateau itself _verna_ is all but absent, but on this broad
and steep incline it congregates in such amazing numbers that, as I
think on it, I am sure all I have said of this witching flower is
poor and paltry. After all, verbal magniloquence is perhaps out of
place, and simplicity is the best translator of such magnificence.
All shades of brightest blue are here presented; for, excepting a few
pale plum-coloured clusters, the brilliant type-flower is ubiquitous,
blending delightfully with the little yellow Violet and with the
white, fluffy seedheads of the Coltsfoot.
But what, perhaps, makes this particular slope so appropriate in
point of illustration for this chapter is, that above it towers the
mighty Aiguille Verte, decked as in winter with its snows and ice, and
in the foreground lies the frozen remains of a great avalanche strewn
with fallen rocks and pierced by stricken larch-trees.
* * * * *
Yes; from the lichen, _Umbilicaria virginis_, the furthest outpost
of vegetable life as it clings to the Jungfrau’s awful rocks at
an altitude of 13,000 feet, to the yellow Primrose of the woods
and meadows of the plains, there is no plant of Alpland that is so
precious, so rare in its very abundance as _Gentiana verna_. Nor is
there another Alpine that can make so wide and so certain an appeal.
Spread broadcast and alone upon the awakening turf of mountain slope
and meadow, it captivates the instant attention of even the merest
passer-by. And if amongst its abounding azure there happens, as will
often be the case, a vigorous admixture of healthy rose and yellow—the
rose of the Mealy or Bird’s-eye Primula, the yellow of the Sulphur
Anemone and Marsh Marigold—then this were a scene to “make the pomp
of emperors ridiculous”; a scene of subtly true magnificence, of
perfectly balanced delight.
See the Vernal Gentian as it lies thus bountifully set, a radiant
blue carpet of heavenly intensity, backed majestically by winter’s
receding snows on mighty glacier and stupendous peak; note its myriad
white-eyed, cœrulean blossoms over which hover with tireless wing
its faithful, eager friends, the humming-bird and bee hawk-moths—the
very picture of security and peace amid a scene of awful, threatening
grandeur. Listen—listen, the while, to the thunder coming from “the
vexed paths of the avalanches”; listen to the sound of falling rock
and pine, and mark the great air-tossed cloud of powdered snow; listen
to the alarm-cry of the speckled mountain-jay, and to the shriek-like
warning of the marmot; then tell me if there is any other flower
that could so well play the part of hope-inspiring herald to a world
as harassed as is that of the Alps in the season that surrounds the
winter?